Yes, that is an actual horse I am by! Finally! (If you haven't figured out by now, I am a "horse nut" and hadn't even been close enough to pet one for the last 4 months. They are my stress release and I've certainly had a bit of "stress" in my life lately.)Maralee had a friend, who has friends (who knew a guy's 2nd cousin's sister-in-law...just kidding, just checking if everyone was following that first part!) who live in the country and have horses. What an answer to prayer!!!! It is really expensive to ride here in Switzerland and they are letting us come whenever we want to and ride and it will help them out too. Can you believe it??? I hardly can!
They live about 15 minutes away from us, by train, and we went to meet them this past Sunday afternoon. They have 5 horses (3 Arabs, 1 French Montagne, and some sort of Portuguese breed) - granted they appear to need a bit of work, but I'm up for a challenge. Plus, we can ride in the mountains.....once we know how to actually get to the mountains, that is. (details, details)
They also raise sheep and they took us up to the sheep pasture to see the Spring lambs and the flock. We had a great time feeding and petting the lambs, watching the sheep, and attempting to speak "farm talk" in French.
Mandi & Maralee got to cuddle with some of the lambs. Maralee wanted to take one home but figured it would be a tight fit in her apartment. I fed a couple of the babies and tried to "sweet talk" some of the big ones into some hay from my hand - they weren't too sure about it, but a couple were brave enough.
When you are around sheep, it makes you really think about why we are compared to sheep in the Bible. Really folks, it's NOT much of a compliment. Sheep must rank about the lowest on the IQ scale for animals. Guess what they are known for - yep, "following." Be it the feed bucket, the sheep in front of them, their owner, etc. Wherever the thing in front of them goes, they follow; be it off a cliff, out to the pasture, or into the barn. Granted, they have the "cute" factor going when they are little, but without their shepherd they wouldn't last a day! Makes me glad I have a Shepherd too!
2 comments:
Yeah! You've got friends AND you've got horses. That makes the prayer list pretty complete I think! It's going to eventually be kind of hard to leave that place, but you'll keep coming back...
You excitement over finding horses is a magnified version of what I felt today when I discovered that the hockey rink is mostly melted and I am better on rollerblades than I thought I was. I am not finished with hockey for the rest of my life, as I had feared!
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